Fingerprints

A child is a ball of clay -

blank, innocent, impressionable.

The mother is the artist -

creating, molding, correcting.

Occasionally, the creation defies the creator --

collapses into bits,
seeps through the fingers,
droops into nothingness.

Mostly, the creation becomes an extension of the creator --

finds the desired forms,
bends at the precise angles,
holds the intended dimensions.

Just like clay --

My mother’s hands have shaped me . . .

bathing me in the kitchen sink and rubbing

away the dirt and kneading away the chill.

checking my forehead for fever in bed as I dreamt

the overhead light was going to crush me.

swatting me after I poured Prell into her stew on

the stove as I brewed a magical potion.

prying me from her leg as I clung there not wanting to

face the first day of school without her.

cradling a Peanuts book, sifting through the pages, and

pointing to each word as I struggled to enunciate them.

shooing me out of the women’s dressing room in Penny’s as I

followed her in, frightened to be just a few feet away in the big store.

supporting me as I stumbled and jerked in the front yard

as I worked to regain my former gait after fracturing my ankle.
 praising me as she clapped and waved from the stands
when I singled in the winning run against Hallock-Kennedy.

healing as she fished shards of glass from my ear lobe

and daubed blood from my face after my car accident.

consoling me as she gripped my hand after the biopsy

revealed the tumors lurking in her lungs.

inspecting my Fighting Irish tattoo on my left arm and scowling

even as I explained it was a tribute to her and her fight.

Just like clay --

My mother’s hands have shaped me.

I once read that a creation scientist somewhere concluded that if you could break
down our cells, atoms, our very DNA, you would find the fingerprints of God.

If that scientist were to break me down memory by memory, emotion by emotion,

chromosome by chromosome, he would find the very same -- the fingerprints of my
mother.